5 Poems by Robinson Jeffers: “Lend me the stone strength of the past”

The Maid’s Thought

Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something.The west wind is dead, the wavesForget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyonsWhole hillsides burst aglowWith golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,And every pool was rimmedWith sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.Now tall and slender suddenlyThe stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks,The penciled ones on the hill;This deerweed shivers with gold, the white globe-tulipsBlow out their silky bubbles,But in the next glen bronze-bells nod, the doesScalded by some hot longingCan hardly set their pointed hoofs to expectLove but they crush a flower;Shells pair on the rock, birds mate, the moths fly double.O it is time for us nowMouth kindling mouth to entangle our maiden bodiesTo make that burning flower.

The Excesses of God

Is it not by his high superfluousness we knowOur God? For to equal a needIs natural, animal, mineral: but to flingRainbows over the rainAnd beauty above the moon, and secret rainbowsOn the domes of deep sea-shells,And make the necessary embrace of breedingBeautiful also as fire,Not even the weeds to multiply without blossomNor the birds without music:There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,The extravagant kindness, the fountainHumanity can understand, and would flow likewiseIf power and desire were perch-mates.

Natural Music

The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers,(Winter has given them gold for silverTo stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their banks)From different throats intone one language.So I believe if we were strong enough to listen withoutDivisions of desire and terrorTo the storm of the sick nations, the rage of the hunger-smitten cities,Those voices also would be foundClean as a child’s; or like some girl’s breathing who dances aloneBy the ocean-shore, dreaming of lovers.

Age in Prospect

Praise youth’s hot blood if you will, I think that happinessRather consists in having lived clear throughYouth and hot blood, on to the wintrier hemisphereWhere one has time to wait and remember.

Youth and hot blood are beautiful, so is peacefulness.Youth had some islands in it but age is indeedAn island and a peak; age has infirmities,Not few, but youth is all one fever.

To look around and to love in his appearances,Though a little calmly, the universal God’sBeauty is better I think than to lip eagerlyThe mother’s breast or another woman’s.

And there is no possession more sure than memory’s;But if I reach that gray island, that peak,My hope is still to possess with eyes that homelinessOf ancient loves, ocean and mountains,

And meditate the sea-mouth of immortalityAnd the fountain six feet down with a quieter thirstThan now I feel for old age; a creature progressivelyThirsty for life will be for death too.

To the Rock that Will Be a Cornerstone of the House

Old garden of grayish and ochre lichen,How long a time since the brown people who have vanished from hereBuilt fires beside you and nestled by youOut of the ranging sea-wind? A hundred years, two hundred,You have been dissevered from humanityAnd only known the stubble squirrels and the headland rabbits,Or the long-fetlocked plowhorsesBreaking the hilltop in December, sea-gulls following,Screaming in the black furrow; no oneTouched you with love, the gray hawk and the red hawk touched youWhere now my hand lies. So I have brought youWine and white milk and honey for the hundred years of famineAnd the hundred cold ages of sea-wind.

I did not dream the taste of wine could bind with granite,Nor honey and milk please you; but sweetlyThey mingle down the storm-worn cracks among the mosses,Interpenetrating the silentWing-prints of ancient weathers long at peace, and the olderScars of primal fire, and the stoneEndurance that is waiting millions of years to carryA corner of the house, this also destined.Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend youThe wings of the future, for I have them.How dear you will be to me when I too grow old, old comrade.